Cripping Empathy in Graphic Medicine

Abstract:Graphic medicine, despite claiming to have moved into a "post-evangelical" phase of critical examination, has not yet looked critically at the claims made for the empathic power of the field and genre. By tracing empathy's contested history across different fields, the article shows how empathy runs the risk of being based in projection and self-interest, foreclosing the opportunity for pro-social action. Focusing on its utilization in medical training and education within graphic medicine, the article's argument is that this can decontextualize and individualize the clinical encounter, reinforcing the medical model of disability. Also considered is how the potential appeal of graphic medicine to non-disabled audiences can lead to a damaging misconception of the nature of lived experience and can reinforce unequal power relations between empathizer and object of empathy, failing to address systematic oppression. The article ends by stressing several alternative critical approaches to empathy within graphic medicine that might aid a more productive approach to disability within the field.